Rent Controls A Way To Ensure Affordable Housing

November 22, 1985|By Albi Mason, Special to The Sentinel

If you're a worker in a service industry -- tourism, for example -- and you make $3.50 an hour, the American dream of owning a home is beyond your reach. And without doubling or tripling up, it's tough to find affordable apartments. One of America's great tragedies -- a problem it has never solved -- is how to provide reasonably priced housing.

Department of Housing and Urban Development guidelines state that no more than 25 percent of a person's income should be spent on housing. However, a study by the U.S. General Accounting Office found that the number of renters paying 35 percent or more of their income for rent increased about 1.9 million from 1973-77. Of the 7.4 million renters paying more than 35 percent, 4.2 million paid more than 50 percent. And of those 7.4 million renters, about 86 percent had annual incomes of less than $7,000.

How do these statistics translate in 1985? Using the GAO's figure of 9.6 percent as the median annual rent increase since 1977, the same apartment that cost $250 per month in 1977 now costs $519 per month. How many people had their salaries increase by the same percentage each year?

Perhaps that's why rent control movements have sprung up around the country. Cities such as Santa Barbara, Calif., San Francisco and New York have rent control ordinances.

In Orlando, it's tough to find decent low- to moderate-priced rental housing. Where can people with low-income jobs -- the housekeepers, desk clerks and people who work in fast-food restaurants -- afford to live?

Florida law prohibits cities and counties from imposing controls on rent unless necessary to ''eliminate a housing emergency,'' although the Orange County Housing Authority has some rent controls on projects built from tax- free bonds. Any time a person has to choose between food and medical care or paying the rent, that is an emergency.

City and county officials must be convinced that there is an emergency -- and of the need to establish rent control boards.

Members of the board could be appointed, but, ideally, they should be elected to ensure their accountability to the voters. However they would be selected, they should be required to disclose their real-estate holdings.

The board should have powers to determine a fair base rent for apartment complexes of four or more units, establish guidelines for rent increases and set uniform standards of rent throughout a county or city.

How would a rent-control board be funded? Some cities operate their boards with money collected from annual registration fees charged to landlords. Florida's new Bureau of Mobile Homes, which oversees statutory standards in mobile-home parks, is funded with annual fees collected from park owners.

Some opponents of rent control fear it would spur apartment owners to convert their property to condominiums, and there would be even fewer rental properties. But even without controls, apartment complexes in Orlando have been converted to condos.

Rent control does not mean a complete curtailment of landlord profits. Instead, it would curb excessive profits.

It's one way to ensure that all Central Floridians have an affordable place to live.